


a drop in your ocean

by zenelly



Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M, Pale Davekat - Freeform, Post-Sburb, immediately pre act 7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-24
Updated: 2016-04-24
Packaged: 2018-06-04 08:00:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6649111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zenelly/pseuds/zenelly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You sit down on a lotus pad at the end of the universe, hands shaking. In fact, you’re shaking pretty much all over, from shoulders to toes, a constant, violent tremor spanning you from inside out. Even your breaths are uneven, shuddering and heaving in fitful starts and stops.</p><p>This has become really, startlingly unfamiliar in these last three years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a drop in your ocean

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so this is all absolutely, 100000% [Bina's](binart.tumblr.com) fault, because she prompted me with "things you said when i was crying" and like, three hours and almost 2k later WHOOPS. YOU'RE WELCOME BINA, ILU.
> 
> Title of the fic from one of my FAVORITE JOHNDAVE SONGS: Trembling Hands by The Temper Trap  
> \--
> 
> Also, will take a moment here to elaborate on the Pale davekat, because I like the relationship, but I'm also not about to break that shit up for my OTP needs, and their quadrant was never officially stated! SO *makes wanking motions* have this, because I said so.

 

You sit down on a lotus pad at the end of the universe, hands shaking. In fact, you’re shaking pretty much all over, from shoulders to toes, a constant, violent tremor spanning you from inside out. Even your breaths are uneven, shuddering and heaving in fitful starts and stops. 

This has become really, startlingly unfamiliar in these last three years.

Panic was a familiar friend to you, before you travelled on the meteor. You haven’t had to fight it for such a long time now. And you haven’t even seen your land since the whole Green Sun debacle unless it’s been in a dreambubble, and those you typically leave before the sound of metal ends up echoing in your ears for days upon days. This awful, breathless sense of inevitability has been so far from you, except in dreams.

And now, except in this.

Dirk and Terezi have flitted off to their respective returns, and while you greeted Karkat, glad to see that he made it out of the fracas safe and unharmed (because you’d fucking fight a man for your moirail, all alien bullshit aside), you are now all waiting for the forge to be primed. There’s nothing left that you need to do anymore except sit here. Feet dangling over the edge into paradox space, Skaia immutable and large above you.

Yet, you can’t breathe. And you can’t stop shaking.

The feeling of your sword’s handle is pressed into your palms like a most unwelcome brand. You clench your hands into fists and you can still feel it. Digging in. Leaving you with the same terror marks that you’ve been fighting for years now, but here they are again.

Here you are again.

A soft step behind you. You try not to startle, but it’s a near thing.

“Hard to believe it’s almost all over, huh?” John asks, sitting down beside you. 

“Yeah,” you say, and you’re honestly proud that your voice doesn’t break. You can feel it threatening to, and you swallow, swallow, swallow, willing it and yourself to be still. Your fingers twist together as you worry your hands. You can’t stop shaking. “I mean, we’re about to. Fucking get it all. After all the bullshit and fucked up nonsense. A whole new world. Straight out of a Disney song, that shit is.”

“A whole new universe.” John lets out a long sigh, one that ruffles your cape and cowl as the Breeze picks it up. “I can’t believe it.”

You chance a look at him in the slim sliver of space around your shades and the sight of his face turned up towards Skaia, smile gently illuminated by all the goddamned potential for a new universe, is almost more than you can bear. You’ve waited so long to know that he’s okay, and here he is. In the flesh. John Egbert, sweaty, triumphant, and alive.

You can’t forget the fact that he died.

He had died and you had been without even the promise of him until you had learned about this, alternate universe John but still somehow alpha timeline. Your own mortality aside, you could have lost him today. Again. After seeing him in person for the first time. After getting to sit and talk with him just a little bit, even in a conversation that was steeped more in promise than it was anything else.

After you almost told him that you like him.

You could have lost him again and he never would have known. You still don’t even know how to say it.

Looking down at your hands, you swear you can still see the red marks where the hilt of your sword cut into your palms. The red where you caught Dirk’s head and braced his falling body, worried that Jane wouldn’t get there in time, and that you would lose one of the other best things that’s ever fucking happened to you, because this Bro is one you can talk to because he  _ isn’t _ . Bro. He’s just Dirk. And you killed him. Had to, really. 

You could have lost everything.

“Dave?” John leans forward, curious. “Dave, why are you crying?”

Shit.

Are you?

Fuck, yeah, you are. Tears are streaming down your cheeks as your shoulders shake uncontrollably, and you can’t. Breathe.

“Hey, Dave, shh, hey, come here, c’mere, it’s okay. You’re okay, it’s all over,” John says, and he wraps an arm around your shoulder, tentative. You go easily without any urging, leaning hard against him.

Your press your face against his neck, and your hands frantically shake until he catches them in his own, so warm in comparison to your frigid fingertips. You can’t stop crying, and you can’t breathe, and you can hear the scrape and clash of metal ringing in your ears, the press-give of flesh and bone and carapace against your blade and your hands, and you can’t stop shaking. You could have lost them all. Rose and Karkat, Dirk and John. But they’re all alive. You’re alive.

John turns his face against your hair, making quiet soothing noises as he does. “Dave, hush, just breathe, it’s okay.”

How do you tell him that you can’t?

How do you tell him that it’s not okay? Victory aside, you won’t sleep easily for years after this. You can’t. The sound of metal haunts your nightmarevs constantly, and now that you’ve faced it head on again? You were brave for the exact two seconds you needed to be, and that was it. There’s no more bravery left in you. 

There’s nothing.

There’s nothing left in you aside from the trembling and his arms around your shoulders, and the fear that is now rushing over you in the aftermath of battle.

“Hey, Dave, did you know? I was really excited to see you again. We never really got a chance to talk in the other universe because I was still popping around through the entire universe, which, wow, let me tell you that story sometime. But I… wasn’t able to help you when you needed me. I wasn’t able to be there for anyone, really,” John says, and one of his hand comes up to rest against the back of your neck, firm and warm. Its presence eases the tightness in your throat.

You don’t think he knows what he does to you.

You didn’t know that he would do this to you either, not after all this time, so you think it’s alright.

He keeps going, his voice a low rumble, a chasm beneath your ear. “But this time, I got to talk to you, and this time, we won.”

A choked noise escapes you, the first, and John’s hand presses down a bit more firmly, then up, into your hair, nails scraping very gently at your scalp as he pets you and you turn greedily into the contact. You won. That’s it, as far as he’s concerned, and here you are, with John’s hand in your hair and his heartbeat under your ear, and the kernel for a new universe ready to be deployed.

You want to kiss him.

The urge is new, and yet not. It is familiar, but long-forgotten, and now it clamors like a hunger within you.

“We  _ won _ , Dave, it’s all over. There’s so much ahead of us now. You can make all of those terrible comics, and we can take pictures and talk and hang out literally all the time. You and me, and Karkat, and whoever else you want to have around, and it’ll be fine.” John takes a deep breath, pulls you back enough so he can see you. Carefully, he moves your glasses out of the way, wipes your tears, and he smiles. Lopsided and bucktoothed and beautiful. “It’s okay. See, look. We survived, and we can handle anything that comes after this, can’t we?”

You smile, tremulous and small, and John cups your cheek in his hand, thumbing away from of the tears that still fall from your eyes. His eyes, blue, bluer than even Skaia above, search your face carefully. You nod. He’s right. You’ll be okay. Even past the trembling and the uncertainty. You have time to figure it out now.

There’s a breath against your lips.

John’s face is very blurry.

As he kisses you.

Featherlight and tentative, his glasses awkwardly pressing against your nose until you tilt your face to the other side, kissing him more solidly. His hand still holds one of yours, and his fingers thread between your own, anchoring you with every point of contact, and it quiets the clanging of metal, the burn of steel in your nostrils. Fills you with his callouses and his chapped lips, and the lingering taste of salt from both of you until you are overflowing with this and joy and him.

Gently, John shifts and kisses you again, and you kiss him back just to feel him open for you sweetly, as though you were not the only one to think about this in the long stretches of endless night.

“There we go,” he says when he pulls away finally, and you blink at him. John taps your cheek. “You stopped crying.”

“I like you,” you blurt out, because that is the damn cutest thing and he is the damn cutest thing, and you can’t hold it within yourself. Not anymore.

John blinks.

Then smiles, wide and wider, his face slowly reddening. “Well, I uh. I’d hope so! You sort of kissed me.”

“Oh, only sort of? I have to do a better job next time,” you joke, because he’s not pushing you away, he’s look at you with a warm sort of interest. His hand is still in yours, still on your neck, familiar and yet not, welcome and new. “And let’s remember who kissed who first.”

John makes some kind of embarrassed noise, his cheeks still dusted with red as he pushes himself up without letting go of your hand. He tugs you gently, smiling. “Come on, let’s go join the others. It’s time.”

You use his grip to help you up, and stand to face a new unknown. Cheeks dry now. Still and ready. 

Full of possibility.


End file.
